Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Four top nonfiction adventure books

Karen Blixen, a Danish aristocrat, had the spirit of an adventurer from a very young age. As soon as she could escape the stiff Victorian world of her upbringing, she did so, marrying a Swedish cousin and moving to Africa in the early 20th century. She tells the story in her memoir Out of Africa, written under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen soon divorced, and the most compelling sections of her book are those in which she finds herself alone in an unknown country and must decide what kind of life she wants to make for herself.